Anglican Essentials: Going Deeper

Note: this information is for the 2021 class. A Fall 2022 class starting Oct. 11, 2022, will run for 5 weeks instead of 4.

Introduction to the classes

Teacher: Paul Julienne (email: psjulienne@gmail.com)

Part 1 of Anglican Essentials provides an introduction to the basics. It situates Anglican Christianity within the overarching narrative told in the stories of Israel and Jesus in the Bible. We examine the historical origins of Anglican Christianity and explore the sources and nature of Anglican belief and worship, emphasizing the corporate and personal aspects of the liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer.

This Part 2, Going Deeper, is designed to help you go deeper in understanding how “all things hold together in Christ.” Anglicanism is firmly rooted in the life and teachings of the early Christians in the centuries after Jesus. The first two classes will look at the beliefs and spirit of the ancient Christianity that so dramatically changed the pagan Greco-Roman world and can again change ours. The last two classes will help you understand the relation between God and the world that we know as creation ex nihilo (creation from nothing). It enriches our lives and faith to read the two books of nature and Scripture together. Contemporary Anglican voices help us to see the hand of God in all things.

Much of the material in these classes is based on The Sprit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Louis Wilken, emeritus Professor of Christian History at the University of Virginia and a former president of the Patristic Society. Wilken’s book breathes with the spirit of the early Christians and Church Fathers. This spirit is infused with “liturgy-assisted thinking,” dealing with practical issues of instructing a praying and worshiping community on how to live the faith in a variety of quite different political circumstances. The book is reasonably accessible to a reader willing to read and think about it, and blends historical and theological matter in a helpful way, with real and meaty quotes from various early Christians to chew on.

The Fall, 2021, classes will be Tuesday evenings, 7:30 – 9PM, on Oct. 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16. A Zoom link will be provided to class registrants. The links below will take you to the material for each class.

Books used in the class are included in the Bibliography for an earlier class on Anglican Perspectives on Science and Faith. This Bibliography will include a number of other books unrelated to the present class.

All class slides can be viewed or downloaded at this link. Registered members of the class will get a link to the recordings of the classes; others can contact me via email to ask for permission.

Slides for Class 1: